by Jamie Blair
"Don't worry," I told her. "Someone tore out the good parts."
She grabbed the journal off of the countertop. "This is personal family documentation."
"Was Estelle's son Dalton's?"
Her face pinched and turned white. "Get out."
"Did Dalton steal Joseph Longo's signet ring? Was that Dalton's finger that Irene found?"
"I said, get out!"
"I found the loop of hair in the back of the journal held with the wax seal--the seal with Joseph Longo's monogram stamped in it. The monogram from his signet ring. Dalton had the ring, didn't he?"
"Yes, all right? I'm descended from a cursed circus mummy! Now my disgrace is official. I'll write a formal letter to the Daughters telling them all I'm a fraud. A town founder wasn't my ancestor. The only history I can claim is in that spectacle Steve Longo has set up beside the canal. Cursed indeed!"
"Fiona, nobody is going to think less of you. I won't say a word, so it's in your hands, but can you tell me what happened to Joseph and Dalton?"
She slumped on a stool behind the counter. "I have the missing pages. They're humiliating."
"What do they say? I already know the outcome, just not how Estelle got there."
Fiona wrung her hands. "They were like Metamora's own Bonnie and Clyde. He was a train robber, a common thief. If he got close enough, he'd steal a shirt off another man's back, and she was his champion. It was sick. She became pregnant and planned to run away with him, but on the day they were to leave, he was killed. I don't know how, but likely during the commission of a crime."
"He was still working for Joseph Longo when he was killed?"
"Estelle wrote that Joseph had heard rumor that Dalton was planning on skipping town before paying off his debt and she felt it was urgent that they leave before Joseph talked Dalton into staying."
"Did Paul Brooks ever find out about Estelle and Dalton?"
"He did, but Estelle wrote that he never cared for her and only wanted a wife for social standing. Married men were considered more serious and trustworthy. It was good for business."
"Do you think he killed Dalton?"
Fiona took a deep breath and sighed. "I've wondered of course, but I have no way of knowing."
"I suppose not. But the important thing for you is that you don't know where the bones came from. You don't, do you?"
"No! I've said it a million times. I don't have any idea where they came from or whose they are!"
"I have an idea whose they are. I think you do too."
"I told you, I don't know how he died or who killed him, so how would I know it's him?"
"You don't. A DNA test might help us figure it out though."
"A DNA test? Irrefutable proof that the train robber turned circus freak was my relation." She shrugged. "Why not? I've hit rock bottom, there's no pride left inside me."
"We can't choose our relatives," I said. "It doesn't make you any less of a person than who you were yesterday or last year."
"It feels like it does. I'm not a Daughter anymore. Even if it was a lie, it was my lie."
"Maybe it's time the Daughters turn to a new chapter in their own history."
"I don't think there's a choice."
Since the president and sergeant-at-arms were both out of their good graces, Cass's dinner club might not be a pie in the sky idea after all.
"Can I call Ben and tell him so he can have the DNA test done? They have a rapid results test, so they may be able to tell if you're a match with the bones by this afternoon."
"Go ahead. Give him a call. I knew this would all come out someday. A skeleton never stays in the closet."
This skeleton hadn't stayed wherever it had been stowed for all of those years, and I had a feeling the DNA test would come back as a match.
Ben, Walter, Pamela, and I paced around my family room waiting for the lab to call with the DNA test results. It had been a long afternoon and the clock read a quarter after four. We were fast approaching evening and on edge.
"My patience is being tested," Walter said. "We may be able to put the question of identification behind us today."
"My patience was gone around noon," I said. "This is torture."
I'd nibbled more cookies than I could count and it did nothing to subdue my nerves.
"Any time now," Pamela assured us, checking her cell phone for the thousandth time.
"If it's Dalton Stokes," Ben said, "then we need to identify who would have had access to his bones and how."
"And who killed him," Walter said.
"We might never know who killed him," Ben said. "Our immediate goal is to figure out where his bones came from and who dumped them."
"One could lead to the other," I said.
Pamela's phone rang and our eyes shifted to her hand where she held it. "This is it," she said, and answered.
Ben gripped my shoulders. "I don't know why I'm so anxious," he said. "This is more nerve wracking than any big case I've worked."
"There have been nothing but dead ends. This could be the break we've been waiting for."
Walter crossed his arms and kept his eyes trained on Pamela, waiting for a sign.
"Okay," she said. "I see." Nothing gave us a clue. Finally she hung up and turned her eyes on us. "Are you ready to know?"
"If you don't tell us right this second I might have to flip out," I warned.
She laughed and shouted, "It's a match!"
We all cheered and hugged. Liam raced around our feet barking.
"Keep it down!" Mia yelled, storming into the room. "Some of us have homework!"
"The teenager telling the parents to keep it down," Walter said. "Now I've heard it all."
"So have I," Mia said, and turned on her heel.
I couldn't help but laugh. So many times it was me telling her to turn down her music, and now the tables had turned.
The laughter felt good. After a week of uncertainty and wandering blindly into corners, we'd finally found our mystery man.
There were two people in this town connected to Dalton Stokes. One was Fiona and I was certain she was telling the truth. The other I wasn't convinced was so innocent. And that red gunk on my pants wasn’t blood. If my intuition was correct, it was red paint. Red face paint.
It was time to talk to Steve Longo again.
The tent was closed up for the evening, and the door to Odd and Strange Metamora was locked. Steve lived above the shop, so I rounded the building and climbed the rickety stairs up the fire escape to the second story. The sun had set and in the dark I barely spotted Spook sitting on the landing. He licked his paw and swiped it over his ears.
"You get around," I told him, and scratched underneath his chin.
A door the size of a hobbit led inside from the landing, so I knocked on it and waited. At least it wasn't a window that I'd have to crawl through if Steve was home.
"Cameron?" he said, cracking the door open. "What are you doing out there?"
"I need to talk to you and the door downstairs is locked."
"There's a doorbell. I would've come down and opened it."
"Oh. Well, that makes sense. I sure wish I'd noticed that before climbing up the fire escape."
"Come in." Steve took my arm and helped me through the tiny door. "What can I do for you?"
He didn't look well. It had been a long week for all of us, but Steve was running on fumes and had been desperate for help in his tent all week. "How much longer does your spring carnival tent display go on?"
"Tomorrow is the last day. I think it's been a pretty good show. Hopefully, I'll get some rest when it's over."
"You look worn out."
He turned and took a few steps, looking up at the ceiling. "It should be better soon."
"Steve," I said, "I came to ask you about your great-grandfather. I know the bones don't belong to him. They were DNA tested. We know whose bones they are, and you do too, don't you?"
He whipped his head around to look at me. "Why do you say that?"
"I know
the whole story. The Pharaoh's Cursed Mummy, who was Dalton Stokes, a train robber. How your great-grandpa paid his bail money. How Dalton was planning on skipping out on him."
I stopped talking to gauge his reaction. He didn't move a muscle. I wasn't sure he was breathing, so to get a jolt out of him, I added, "Your great-grandfather's ring."
Steve dropped his head and closed his eyes. Then there was a shuffling sound coming from above us, up in the attic.
"It's him," Steve said, in a panicked whisper. "I did all of this for him. The tent, the history, the tours, all of it to appease him and he still won't leave me alone!"
"Who? What are you talking about?" Something was very wrong with Steve. He was acting like a cat on hot bricks.
"Dalton." He reached out and grabbed both of my hands. "He's been haunting me ever since I found him in the attic."
"You're the one who put his bones in Soapy's dumpster?"
His face fell in humiliation. "I had to get rid of him."
There was a bump in the attic. "Listen," He said, his eyes darting back to the ceiling. "He won't leave me alone. He's going to make me pay for what my great-grandfather did to him."
"What did he do?"
"He killed him. He found out Dalton stole his ring to sell for money and he was going to skip town and great-grandfather killed him. Then he kept displaying him as the mummy to earn back the bail money even after Dalton was dead. Over time he became the Pharaoh's Cursed Skeleton."
The idea was gruesome enough, I didn't want to know the details. I'd leave that to Walter and Pamela.
"Steve, when you say he's haunting you, do you mean those noises you hear right now?"
He pointed to the ceiling, his face sallow and jaw clenched. I thought he might be ill.
"That's not Dalton haunting you," I said, easing him over to the sofa to sit. I lowered myself beside him and kept holding his hands. "Those are raccoons. They've been in my attic at night too. How long have you known Dalton's bones were up there?"
"I’d heard stories when I was young." He leaned his head back against the cushions. "It's always made me anxious. I've had the remains of a murdered man in the attic. They were there long before me and I didn't know what to do about them."
"So you heard the scuffle up there and your mind put two and two together and you had to get rid of the bones and do something to make up for what Joseph did, so you put on the spring carnival telling their story."
He shut his eyes and nodded. "I don't think I can keep this business. I've spent my life keeping a tainted history alive."
"You've spent your life sharing amazing relics with everyone who visits our town. You weren't a part of anything that happened a century ago. Now the truth is out and the bones will be buried and you're free of all of it."
A tear rolled down his cheek. "It's been a burden for too long."
"You can rest easy now."
The raccoons chittered their agreement.
"Well, you can rest as much as possible with your uninvited upstairs guests."
I couldn't be annoyed with the raccoons taking over the town. They came and freed the skeleton that had been kept in the attic for way too long.
Fiona and Steve would have to deal with the turmoil that the truth caused, but in the end they were freed too.
22
Friday came around again and the J.A. Longo & Friends tent came down and went in the trash. Not only had the identity been discovered of the man whose bones been found, but so had his killer.
Chalk another one up for the Metamora Action Agency.
"They're back," Ben said, in an ominous tone hearing the barking at the door.
Liam skidding down the hall to the front door and I followed.
Gus, Colby, and Jack were back home, and I wasn't sure what to expect. Would my pack of dogs be the wild, crazy fuzzballs I'd grown to love, or would they be behaved and calm and unrecognizable other than their coats?
I opened the door feeling nervous about what I'd find on the other side. The three of them sat on the porch. A quiver passed through them and their tails whacked back and forth. Liam ran out and circled them, barking and snapping at them to play. Gus raised himself a few inches and Quinn, standing on the sidewalk behind them, said, "Stay."
Gus sat back down and stayed, ignoring Liam.
"Hi Cam," Quinn said. "When I release them they'll probably rush at you. All you have to do is tell them to settle down. You should have a treat and lead them to a place where you want them to relax."
"Okay. Let me get a treat." I hurried past Ben drinking coffee and reading the paper at the table to the pantry and came back to find the trio right where I left them.
"Ready?" Quinn asked.
"Ready."
"Guys, break," he said.
My boys jumped up and darted toward me, their whole hind ends wagging. I knelt down and grabbed them in my arms giving them hugs and kisses. "I missed you guys! Liam missed you, and Ben and Mia missed you, too."
They began to get a little rowdy, jumping up with their paws on me.
"Cam, the command," Quinn said.
"Right." I stood up straight and said, "Settle down." I showed them the treats and led them down the hall into the family room where I gave them each a Carrot Cake Canine Cookie. They each found a spot and ate their goody.
"That's amazing," I said, turning to Quinn. Ben stood beside him observing.
"It's unbelievable," Ben said, shaking Quinn's hand. "First Brutus, and now these three."
"They're good dogs, smart and eager to please."
"If you say so," Ben said, laughing. "Can I get you some coffee?"
"That would be great, thanks."
I watched my transformed dogs, wondering if I'd miss their old ways. Liam wasn't sure what to do. He ran from one of them to the next touching noses and sniffing them all over to make sure they weren't body doubles and actually his big brothers.
The phone rang and Ben answered. "Hi, Mom," he said, and took the phone into the dining room.
"Is Monica at Dog Diggity?" I asked Quinn.
"Yeah, I'm going to meet her there. I have something to ask you."
"Okay."
"Do you think it's too soon to propose? I know Monica and I only met six months ago, but in that six months everything has changed for me. I'd planned on going back to Ireland and now I own a business here and run it with the love of my life. I can't see living without her now."
My chest swelled and my eyes watered with tears. I'd been a fan of Quinn Kelly since the day Monica and I met him by the canal with his dog, Conan. I saw how my sister was instantly drawn to him. When they're together, they were a team. It was clear they were meant to be. "No, I don't think it's too soon. I think it's just right." I couldn't hold myself back and dashed forward to give him a hug. At the last minute I thought maybe he'd command me to settle down. Luckily, he didn't.
"Cam," Ben said, coming back into the kitchen. "My mom wants to talk to you."
I searched his face for signs of emotion. I didn't know what they'd talked about, but he seemed to be okay. I took the phone from him and held it to my ear.
"Hello?"
"Hello, Cameron," Irene said. "I want to invite you to the Daughter's meeting tonight."
"The Daughters meeting?" Was she still president?
"We've changed the format a bit. There are no officers. Cass has volunteered to come up with some ideas for our monthly meetings. Tonight we're having dinner at the Briar Bird Inn. It's open to any woman in town, not only the ancestors of the founders. We're dropping the historic part of the name and just making it the Daughters of Metamora. We're meeting at six if you can make it."
You could've knocked me over with a feather. Cass had gotten her wish already and didn't even have to wait until the older generation had left the Daughters to the younger ones. "Thanks for the invitation, Irene. I'll be there."
"Good. This is much more inclusive than before. I think it's a good way forward for the Daughters."
> "I think so, too."
It was also the only way Irene and Fiona would be able to keep their club intact and not be kicked out. I guessed there was nothing more humbling than the threat of being locked up.
Later that afternoon, I sat at a table in the Soapy Savant with my Action Agency crew, Roy, Johnna, Logan, and Anna, and I told them the sordid details I'd learned the night before.
"What's gonna happen to the bones, then?" Roy asked. "I don't suppose the fella's got any relations to claim him." We all knew Fiona wouldn't want any part of the remains.
"I had an idea about that," I said, and gave them my thoughts.
They agreed, and as soon as the body was released, we'd put our plan into action.
"I have a bit of a problem," Roy said. "Maybe you four could tell me if I'm going crazy in the head."
"You are," Johnna said. "No question about it."
"What's up, Roy?" I asked.
He leaned in, so nobody else could hear him. "I think my trailer's haunted. It’s that O’Leary fella from the graveyard who got my cheap whiskey spilt on top of him."
"It's not Mr. O’Leary,” I said.
“It’s the raccoons," Anna said. "Did you hear that part of Cam's story about Steve Longo?"
"Listen, little missy, I don't have an attic like Steve Longo, now do I?"
"They've probably made a nest underneath," Logan said.
"If they're underneath my trailer, then why does Ginger stare at the walls and bark her head off?"
"They must be in the walls," Johnna said.
"And how did they get in there if there's no attic?" Roy leaned back in his chair, confident he'd stumped us, and he had. At least he'd stumped me.
"Have you walked around your trailer and taken a look at every nook and cranny where a critter could hide?" Johnna asked.
"No, I have not. It's muddy and I don't want to ruin my boots."
"Maybe we should check it out," Logan suggested.
The rest of us agreed, and got up from the table to leave and traipse across the bridge and down the road to Roy's house.
It was bright out, not a cloud in the sky and the air was fresh and warm. There was nothing like the smell of spring, grass warming in the sun, and dampness evaporating from the ground. All of our neighbors were out and about, running errands or tidying up their yards.